Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani

Not to be confused with Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani.

Abu Ya'qub Ishaq ibn Ahmad al-Sijistani (Template:Lang-ar) or al-Sijzi (السجزي) was a 10th-century Persian Ismaili missionary active in the northern and eastern Iranian lands. His life is obscure, but he was a prolific writer, who played a crucial role in the infusion of Neoplatonic ideas into Isma'ili theology.

Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani
Title	Chief da'i of Rayy, Sijistan, and Khurasan
Personal
Died	after 971
Religion	Isma'ili Shi'a Islam
Flourished	930s–970s
Known for	Introduction of Neoplatonism into Isma'ili theology
Senior posting
Predecessor	Abu Hatim al-Razi (Rayy), Muhammad al-Nasafi (Khurasan)

Life

Al-Sijistani's life is obscure, as references to him are found mostly in isolation in hostile Sunni heresiological works, while Isma'ili sources usually do not provide any details about him. He was given the nickname 'cottonseed' (Arabic: khayshafūj, Persian: banba-dāna) in several near-contemporary non-Isma'ili works that mention him, but the origin and significance of it are unknown. What can be gleaned from the sources is that he was a senior missionary (da'i) in the Iranian lands of the eastern Islamic world.

Nizam al-Mulk reports that a certain Ishaq succeeded Abu Hatim al-Razi as chief da'i at Rayy upon the latter's death on 934, while Ibn al-Nadim mentions a certain Abu Ya'qub ase chief da'i at Rayy in c. 932–942. This Abu Ya'qub was also in charge of the missionary movement (da'wa) in Upper Mesopotamia and Iraq, with the brothers Abu Muslim and Abu Bakr ibn hammad in Mosul and Ibn Nafis in Baghdad as his agents. This is likely to have been the same person as al-Sijistani, as it agrees with a statement in one of al-Sijistani's works that he was in Iraq in 934. Earlier opinion among scholars was that he was executed along with Muhammad al-Nasafi in 943, but this is now disproven. In reality, he was al-Nasafi's successor, both as chief da'i in Khurasan, as well as in continuing the development of al-Nasafi's theological ideas. Other sources maintain that he was active in Sijistan (whence his nisba), both during and after al-Nasafi's tenure.

The movement he headed was not initially affiliated with the Fatimid Caliphate, but at some point, during the caliphate of al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah (r. 953–975), he accepted the Fatimids as the legitimate imams, and many of his views were taken over by the Fatimid-sponsored da'wa. According to Rashid al-Din Hamadani, al-Sijistani was executed by the Saffarid emir of Sijistan, Khalaf ibn Ahmad (r. 964–1003). Al-Sijistani's work Kitāb al-iftikhār was written around 971, this provides a terminus post quem for his execution. The introductions to two of his other works indicate they were written during the reign of the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (r. 996–1021), but they are likely later interpolations.

Works

Several of al-Sijistani's works survive, having been copied and studied by the Tayyibi Isma'ili communities of Yemen and India. However, as they are regarded as "highly esoteric and restricted", they have been slow to be studied by modern scholars and published in critical editions. Furthermore, as the historian Paul Walker comments, "[a]s they exist now, it is in some cases difficult to determine the original form of the texts", as many survive only in translations or paraphrased summaries. Some works are only known by title or in fragments, being cited or quoted in other works.

Kashf al-mahjub

The Kashf al-maḥjūb ('Unveiling of the Concealed'), was the first of al-Sijistani's works to become available to scholars. It only survives in a Persian translation, or even paraphrase, of the Arabic original, produced in the 11th century. It comprises seven chapters, each further divided into seven parts. The aim of the work is to 'unveil' divine knowledge (gnosis, irfan), and deals with the concepts of the Oneness of God (tawhid), the stages of creation, the nature of prophethood, and resurrection (qiyāma). Based on its containing passages supporting the idea of metempsychosis, it likely belongs to the early phase of al-Sijistani's career, before he accepted Fatimid orthodoxy.

Excerpts of the work were first published by Mahdi Bayani in 1938 (Namūna-yi sukhan-i Fārsī, Tehran, Shirkat-i Chāp-i Khudkār). The Persian text was published with a French commentary in 1949 by Henry Corbin (Tehran, Institut Franco-Iranien & Paris, A. Maisonneuve). Corbin also published a full French translation in 1988 as Le dévoilement des choses cachées: Kashf al-Maḥjûb, Recherches de philosophie Ismaélienne (Lagrasse, Verdier). A partial English translation was published by Hermann Landolt (Kashf al-maḥjūb, Unveiling of the Hidden) in S.H. Nasr and M. Aminrazavi (eds.), An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, Volume II (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001).

Ithbat al-nubu'at

The Ithbāt al-nubūʾāt or al-nubuwwāt ('Proofs of Prophecies'). In its seven sections, al-Sijistani "puts forward a variety of proofs for the necessity of prophecy (nubuwwa), also explaining different prophetic eras". According to Paul Walker, it shows signs of later editing. The work was published in Arabic in 1966 by Arif Tamir (Beirut, al-Matba'a al-Kathulikiyya).

Kitab al-iftikhar

The Kitāb al-iftikhār ('The Book of Boasting'), is likely the last of al-Sijistani's works, being written around 971. As its title suggests, it is "strikingly polemical and strikingly defensive and apologetic" work; Walker describes it as "an exceedingly frank confession of the points of difference between himself and the Ismaili da'wa, on the one hand, and the intellectual, religious world all around him, on the other". For Walker, it is perhaps the "[best] place to look for a definition of [Isma'ili Shiism] in its fourth / tenth-century manifestation", while Farhad Daftary, points out that it "presents a summary exposition of Ismaili doctrine and preserves remnants of the mythological cosmology propounded by the early Ismailis, including the spiritual beings called jadd, fatḥ and khayāl which mediated between the spiritual and the physical worlds".

The work was first partially published by Mustafa Ghalib in 1980 (Beirut, Dar al-Andalus), and in 2000 in full with an English commentary by Ismail K. Poonawala (Beirut, Dar al-Gharb al-Islami).

Sources

• Daftary, Farhad (2004). Ismaili Literature: A Bibliography of Sources and Studies. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0-8577-1386-5.
• Daftary, Farhad (2007). The Ismāʿı̄lı̄s: Their History and Doctrines (Second ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-61636-2.
• Stern, S. M. (1960). "Abū Yaʿḳūb Isḥāḳ b. Aḥmad al-Sid̲j̲zī". In Gibb, H. A. R.; Kramers, J. H.; Lévi-Provençal, E.; Schacht, J.; Lewis, B. & Pellat, Ch. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume I: A–B. Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 160. OCLC 495469456.
• Stern, S. M. (1960). "The Early Ismā'Īlī Missionaries in North-West Persia and in Khurāsān and Transoxania". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 23 (1). doi:10.1017/s0041977x00148992.
• Walker, Paul Ernest (1983). "ABŪ YAʿQŪB SEJESTĀNĪ". In Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.). Encyclopædia Iranica, Volume I/4: Abū Manṣūr Heravı̄–Adat. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 396–398. ISBN 978-0-71009-093-5.
• Walker, Paul Ernest (1993). Early Philosophical Shiism: the Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-44129-3.
• Walker, Paul Ernest (1994). The Wellsprings of Wisdom: A Study of Abu Yaqub Al-Sijistani's Kitab Al-Yanabi. Univ of Utah Pr (Tx). ISBN 0-87480-421-3.
• Walker, Paul Ernest (2014). "Sijistānī, Abū Yaʿqūb al-". In Kalin, Ibrahim (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 255–257. ISBN 978-0-19-981257-8.

External links

• Abu Ya‘qub al-Sijistani at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy